XCOM: Enemy Unknown iOS won't have in-app purchases

The upcoming iOS release of XCOM: Enemy Unknown won't carry any purchasable upgrades, according to the game's designer Jake Solomon.

The Firaxis lead emphatically stated to IGN that there are no plans for in-app purchases when the popular AAA title arrives for iPads and iPhones later this year.

"Oh God, please... no. I'm not sure I would be able to sleep at night. My food would taste like ashes in my mouth."

Solomon added that the game would be sold at a reasonable one-time price, and that the team is looking forward to see how the mobile market reacts to the launch.

"We're going to be offering XCOM at a premium, up-front, fair price. We're excited to be in this position and excited to see how people respond. We've proven [big console-quality experiences] can be recreated on mobile. Now we just have to see how the market responds... If it works, I'll love it. As a gamer. I love games like FTL, Mark of the Ninja, SimCity... I would play the shit out of them on mobile. I want to see that happen."

As development for the game progresses, Firaxis and 2K China now turn their attention to getting all the game's files to fit within the App Store's restrictions.

"We got [XCOM] to run pretty quickly, and said 'wow'. But then we had to get to work solving the storage problem - this is a game we originally shipped on DVD. We saved some space by lowering some texture resolutions, but we also reduced the map count. The maps in XCOM are open play spaces - we still have more included than you'll encounter in a single play through. But we cut them down to get the game down to size."